This document discusses the concept of pivoting in startups. It summarizes the founder's experience with LivingSocial over many years, during which they tried several different business ideas before finding product-market fit. Some of their early ideas like social application consulting and a visual bookshelf site did not prove scalable. Through persistence and many pivots, they eventually succeeded with LivingSocial's daily deals platform in 2009. The founder emphasizes the importance of measuring everything, learning quickly, and iterating until finding a successful product.

1. CHECK YO-SELF BEFORE U
WRECK YO-SELF:
Pivots
Aaron Batalion
Co-Founder & CTO
LivingSocial
@abatalion

2. What is a startup?
"a search for a scalable, repeatable
business model"
- Steve Blank, Four Steps to the Ephiphany
2

3. If a startup is a search....
then your first idea...
is probably wrong!
3

4. So what’s a pivot?
"The idea that successful startups
change direction but stay grounded in
what they've learned"
- Eric Ries, The Lean Startup
4

5. Pivots
Our search for a scalable business
5

6. 07/2007
Social Application Consulting
6

7. 7

8. 8

9. Visual Bookshelf
9

10. Pivots
Scalable?
Need a new idea...
10

11. 11

12. 12

13. 10X more reviews than Amazon!
31,161 vs 2,921
13

14. 14

15. * 10 employees @ $85k = $1M
* $12.50 * 8% = $1
* 1% of purchase conversion
* 100M visitors = $1M
15

16. * 10 employees @ $85k = $1M
* $12.50 * 8% = $1
* 1% of purchase conversion
* 100M visitors = $1M
Have to be top 200 site in US!
16

17. Full Site Takeovers
17

18. Not enough!
More than Books?
18

19. More than Books!
19

20. Doubled Traffic!
Not Enough!
20

21. Google = Document Graph
Facebook = People Graph
LivingSocial = Stuff Graph
21

22. Targeted Ad Platform
22

23. Need Traffic!!
#1 app on MySpace the first day!
Uhhh...
23

24. Pivots
Scalable?
Need a new idea...
24

25. This Stinks!
25

26. Pick Your Five!
26

27. If we nail this...
Facebook will buy us!!
27

28. 28

29. 03/09
~300k PV/day
29

30. 3/21 10M PV/day
30

31. 31

32. 4 engineers
6B PVs/month
35M in 3 weeks no sleep.
32

33. Pivots
Scalable?
Need a new idea...
33

34. 34

35. 35

36. 36

37. 37

38. Seriously guys??
38

39. Solved a real problem
Screw it...
Lets just sell to Facebook..
39

40. Facebook didnt buy us...
40

41. Careful building “features”...
The bigger guy might just build it too.
41

42. 42

43. Fucking Farmville!
Took #1 Spot!
Took user’s CCs!
Reinvested profits for growth!
43

44. Pivots
Scalable Revenue?
Need a new idea...
44

45. 3 cities Small sales team
45

46. 07/21/09
2 week prototype
46

47. Scale Users
+ Scale Merchants
= Scale Revenue
47

48. 48

49. Thousands of field sales
49

50. Thousands of field sales
International Growth
50

51. Thousands of Purchases
Hundreds of Cities
51

52. National Deals
52

53. 80 purchases/sec
2 largest social commerce deals ever
53

54. 54

55. Escapes - Travel
largest flash travel site
in first week
55

56. Premium LivingSocial Events
56

57. High End Restaurants
57

58. White Glove Delivery?
58

59. What about regular delivery?
59

60. 60

61. 61

62. Lessons Learned
62

63. Our Core DNA
=
Products & Techology
63

64. Consumer Internet
Hard Part =
TRACTION
64

65. Learn as fast as possible
find traction
pour gas on the fire!
65

66. Success
not pretty code not infinite scale
It’s SUCCESSFUL Products!
66

67. Measure EVERYTHING!
67

68. Does it work?
68

69. Rails? Node.js? .NET?
Which test framework?
Is my domain model correct?
Heroku? Amazon Web Services?
Shut up and build stuff!
69

70. Dont Hate... Iterate!
70

71. J.S.I.O.
use what you know
“Good enough is ok”
71

72. each developer
deploys dozens of times
per day
72

73. Only work with amazing people
Default to “no”
Culture!
73

74. “12 startups in a startup”
74

75. Execution Matters Most
75

76. 76

77. Pivots
Thanks!
77